My husband and I married across many divides – class, political, minimal personal hygiene levels – but nothing separates us so firmly as our attitudes to Poirot. And by Poirot I mean the bespoke-padded, neatly-pomaded form of David Suchet, who dominated the Christie cultural landscape for a quarter of a century. From the moment he smoothed down his moustache and sallied primly forth as the Belgian detective in 1989 in the first of what would become 70 episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, to devote himself to the solving of mysteries in Art Deco properties across the land, he simply was Hercule. There could be no other. Nor – for lo, these last five years since the series ended – has anyone on TV dared to try.

I did understand that it was A Quality Affair but I just couldn’t bear it. The mannered carefulness. The determined retention of the worst aspect of Christie – the constant feeling of cipher-characters being moved into place by an all-knowing hand, like chess pieces with Marcel waves and costume jewellery. My husband, by way of relations-severing contrast, loves it for precisely this.

Those of you who side with him – who hunt out repeats of The Murder Next to the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Fireguard or The Mystery of the Missing Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph – should look away now. For last night’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 13th Poirot novel, The ABC Murders, was for the rest of us; for those who like their Christie underbelly-up and a nail raked down its pale, fetid flesh. It is Christmas, after all.

As it has been for the last few yuletides, this new adaptation has been gifted us by Sarah Phelps (in a few more years I’m going to be able to relax and consider it an unbreakable BBC tradition). This year, an extra-special treasure lies inside, in the form of John Malkovich as Poirot. Of course there has been much disapproving muttering, especially in the village of Much Muttering which I think is where most of the Marple murders take place. But he is quite magnificent as a suffering Hercule, beset by flashbacks to what seems to be his younger self during the invasion of Belgium and letters from someone signing himself “ABC” and promising mayhem. He is not prim but careful, watchful – of others and perhaps even himself, as although Poirot’s glory days have passed (he even dyes his facial hair), the latent violence in this Malkovich performance is as potent as ever.

The police and public now hold Poirot in contempt. An Inspector Crome has replaced the retired – and by the end of the first act, late – Inspector Japp (death by natural causes, I should note). He tells Poirot that Japp was removed from the force when they couldn’t find any record of Poirot being a detective in Belgium as he claimed. “People don’t like their police being made to look like fools,” he says. It is a neat, credible and timely demonstration of how an immigrant friend (“19 years I have lived here,” he says at one point) can be reconceived as an enemy.

Meanwhile, ABC – Alexander Bonaparte Cust (Eamon Farren) – is making himself as comfortable as possible in his unlovely lodgings overseen by his even more unlovely landlady (Shirley Henderson), who pimps out her daughter at a shilling a time “for ordinary”. He commits his first murder, posing as a stockings salesman to gain access to the women he needs, in Andover. Forewarned by a letter, Poirot attempts to warn the police. They ignore him, so he finds the body himself, then proves that their main suspect couldn’t have done it. This is not the way to a chippy inspector’s heart.

The letter about the second murder arrives on the day it is carried out – on bonny, boozy Betty Barnard, who is also a weapons-grade bitch who stole her sister’s boyfriend and chose very much the wrong man to sexually humiliate when he was in Bexhill looking for someone alliterative to kill.

In one of the less petty moments of humiliation endured by our ageing hero, Crone orders his house to be searched for evidence he claims Poirot has been holding back about the crimes. The letters from ABC are still coming. The latest is from Cricklewood, where Sir Carmichael Clarke is being distracted by his secretary instead of tending to his dying wife. Cowardly cad. On her bedside table, Lady Clarke has a photograph of herself and Poirot at dinner. The credits roll, and you haven’t sensed that hovering hand for a moment. Here, the chess pieces live and breathe, and we believe.